‘There is no such thing as a free lunch’. It’s a saying that means you do not get any­thing for free in this world. But recently I, my mother, and some of her friends, got a free dinner.After watching a wonderful perfor­mance by Andre Rieu in Maastricht, The Netherlands, broadcast live into a local cinema in Scotland, we had booked a table at a nearby, middle of the road but well respected, restau­rant called The Bothy (Scottish name for a small hut used for refuge in a storm on a mountain). At the end we wanted to pay our bills separately. Normally in Kathmandu the waiter would then get a calculator out and start asking what we each had, tick­ing it off the bill as he went.

 

But not so in this paperless restau­rant! Aside from the very off-hand manager who said he was ‘too busy’ to do this (and who really got our heckles up), it seemed impos­sible to simply tick items off the bill without involving the com­puterised till. A special code from employee X was required. Then it seemed the card reader required another authorization code from employee Y. By this time 15 min­utes had passed and we were no closer to paying the bill. Finally, the card reader simply refused to work. We could almost see the smoke coming out of the machine as it scratched its electronic head!

 

At this point the owner, who had somehow become involved, said the computerized system was not built to cope with changes once the orig­inal information was fed in. In exas­peration she gave herself authority to write off our meal. A free dinner! We were quite relieved the matter was now resolved as we had things to do that evening. But we were also concerned that the restaurant lost out on quite a bit of money because the paperless system was inflexible.

 

This incident brought to mind a picture of Nepali politicians sitting in a meeting with their brand new Macbook Pro laptops. Presumably because the Nepal Government is set to go paperless. There are a lot of things that can be said here such as: are all politicians computer lit­erate (after using a laptop for about 15 years my skills are still pretty near zero), can they type in Nepali (which I believe is a skill in itself), or are they working in English (a second language in which few will be fluent)? But mainly my thoughts go out to those who are trying to move their case (landpapers/mar­riages/ passports/ citizenships/birth registration, etc) around the many government departments.

 

Do we all need to have access to computers now? What about those who either cannot afford a com­puter, lack the skills, or live in an area which does not have access to such things or even access to inter­net or electricity? What happens when remote area (ex VDC office—and what is a local government office called these days anyway?) meets central government?

 

Currently if you want to find a file in a government office that you filed some time back, there is a helpful peon who knows exactly what room and what pile of folders your file is in. What happens when this is on some equivalent of the Cloud? Taxes have been submitted on-line for quite some time now. But of course, in the end, taxpayers end up in the tax office in person any way. How are they going to avoid similar sce­narios in every department?

 

Remember the breathalysers that were handed out to the police some time back? What happened to them? (And don’t even think about the health risks involved in breathing into the officer’s face.) Will those lovely Macbook Pros go the same way as the breathalysers?

 

Yes, going paperless could well result in a lot of free dinners!